Richard T. Griffiths (B. 1948) is an economic historian by training and before his (so-called) retirement he held professorships in Amsterdam (1980-1987), Florence (1987-1995) and Leiden (1995-2016). In this last position he was responsible for establishing a masters’ program in European Union Studies and a bachelor degree in International Studies. After his retirement, he worked as Innovation Fellow at the Centre for Innovation, focussing on the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS) and in 2017 he received the Award for Excellence in Innovation from Coursera. In 2018, became a research fellow with the International Institute for Asian Studies where he runs the ‘New Silk Roads’ research project. He has published Revitalising the Silk Road (1987) and his new book The New Silk Road. Challenge and Response (2019) is in the press. He is currently working on a double volume timed to coincide with the celebration of the fifth anniversary of the publication of China’s Vision and Action Plan in March 2020.